How corporations such as WB got Congress to extend the copyright period by several decades thus giving these corprorations exclusive use of a number of creative properties for several decades beyond when that use should have ended.

By all rights Superman should have been going public about now. In which case we'd possibly be getting a Marvel/Disney Superman film that might have been the success that eluded WB with SR and will probably elude them with MOS.

To be fair Congress inserted a clause in the bill allowing the original creators or their heirs to reclaim the copyrights during this extended period.

Many corporations were lucky as there was no one to reclaim the rights so the company got a free pass at exclusive use of the property for several extra decades.

WB wasn't so lucky. The heirs knew of the legal changes and to boot had been unhappy with the way both DC and WB had failed to exploit the Superman property for decades. In fact alowing it to fade as a viable franchise.

The heirs wanted not just to get revenue generated by Superman during the next 2 decades, they wanted to have some say in the direction of the franchise. Some quality control.

The problem is that Superman goes public around 2030. Without a resolution by 2013 this legal fight could go on till the early 2020s. To the point where the heirs have little time to exploit their rights - they may not have time to do a Superman film trilogy which would be lucrative financially and allow them to restore the franchise to it's historically more prominent place.

Me, I wish the law had never been passed by Congress and that Superman was going public now. I see that as possibly having saved the franchise.

Well I'm sure characters like Superman and Mickey Mouse will never be allowed to go to public domain as long as they are being utilized by their respective owners.